Part 8 – Gotta Light?

In the lead up to Part 8, there was news about this episode being big. Producer Sabrina Sutherland said on Twitter that Part 8 is a must-see. Director of Photography said that Part 8 is “like no other.” They weren’t kidding.

Unlike most of the Episode Guides on TPG, I’m going to have to break from the usual descriptive approach of simply describing what happened and actually analyze some of the scenes – I’ve placed these in red. As a result, this guide may very well receive edits (or could be flat out wrong) as the rest of the series progresses.

Part 8 opens with Evil Cooper and Ray in the car in the middle of the night. They are behind a truck and Cooper looks down at what appears to be a phone. The screen has 3 buttons – one with a C, one with Fire and the other a “D” and an “X” with a large yellow circle in the middle with a red dot. He tells ray that there are three tracking devices on the car and clicks each one. As they approach the truck, Mr C types in the license plate and then throws the device away.

Ray apologizes for getting caught and thanks Mr C for getting him out. He tells Ray that Darya is waiting for a phone call when they arrive at their destination. Mr C tells him that they should probably go to the Farm and Ray says that’s what he is thinking.

Mr C tells him that he has something that he wants and Ray confirms. He says he has it memorized – all numbers. He tells Mr C that the information might be worth a lot of money. Mr C looks unhappy with the revelation that Ray wants some money.

Ray gets off the road and they drive for while on some desolate roads and then on a dirt road. They do not talk until Ray tells Mr C he needs to stop and “take a leak.” Ray pulls over to go to the restroom. Evil Cooper opens the glove box and pulls out the “little friend” that the Warden left. He checks the gun for bullets and then steps out of the car and walks to Ray.

Mr C: Ray, I want that information.
Ray: Yes?
Mr C: Looks like you’re out half a million.
Ray: (zipping up and pulling out a gun) I think you’re wrong about that.
Mr C: (pulls the trigger a few times but the gun does not go off)
Ray: Tricked you, f***er.

Ray fires two times and Mr C hits the ground. He walks up and is about to make one final shot when lights start to blink and out of the woods come three dark woodsmen. They surround the body of Evil Cooper. Ray watches in horror as the three pat the ground around and under Mr C. A blue light continues to flash as now they touch the body of Mr C — blood covering the doppleganger. They continue the ritual as Ray looks on – now falling to the ground. They cover Mr C’s head with blood. Slowly a mass emerges from the body. It’s the face of BOB who smiles at the camera. Ray runs off and gets back in the car. He drives off while the woodsmen continue to dance around the body. Lights flash and they slowly disappear from the scene.

The moon is in the night sky as Ray is driving down the road. He speaks into a phone. “Philip, it’s Ray. I think he’s dead. But he’s found some kind of help so I’m not 100 percent. I saw something in Cooper. It may be the key to what all this is about. And I told him where I’m going so if he comes after me, I will get him there.” He hangs up the phone. I’m guessing this is Philip Jeffries which suggests that Jeffries is behind the hit on Mr C.

Cut to the Roadhouse where Nine Inch Nails performs a full song. Lyrics are telling:

Cut to the body of Mr C laying on the ground. He suddenly sits up. His eyes are closed initially but it slowly opens them up and stares ahead. Even though his black eyes are still there — something is different with Evil Cooper. My impression is that the woodsmen removed BOB from him for good. This harkens back to Part 5 when Mr C looks into the mirror and sees BOB and says, “I’m glad you’re still with me.” I tend to think BOB is no longer with Mr C.

Cut to July 16, 1945 – White Sands New Mexico – 5:29 (MWT) That is Mountain War Time which would be 4:30 Pacific Time (4-3-0). Technically, this went off at 5:29 and 45 seconds. At 4:30 AM Pacific Time – was BOB born?

A count down….three…two…one….Music plays – Penderecki’s Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima.

The first atom bomb is successfully tested. From afar we see the explosion and the growing mushroom cloud. Around is vast desert as the explosion grows and grows. The entire scene is in black and white. We see the initial bursts spreading out from the middle of the explosion as the cloud continues to climb. We enter the mushroom cloud.

A mixture of colors bombard us as smoke and lights flash. A series of what looks like bugs flying through space. More orange lights. More bug/film scratches. The scenes become more intense as the explosion continues to expand. Suddenly changes to a strange orange/black cloud followed by a series of firework explosions with intense color. They continue to explode as the camera moves through the cloud. Explosions all around. Series of red scenes and orange scenes. More explosions and then black and white fire and black and white explosions. Fire that swirls. I believe we have traveled through the mushroom cloud here. The color is supernatural explosions that are opening portals that have not been opened before. When the scenes turn back to black and white, we are back to “real world”. FIRE WALK WITH ME.

Slow fade to a single building Two gas pumps sit in the front. The sign on the building reads “Convenience Store.” There is a door in the middle and two large windows on each side of the door. Two lights hang above the gas pumps. On the right side is a stair case at the back of the convenience store leading to the roof or an unseen second story.

The door appears to open and close by itself.Then a cloud of smoke appears out of the door and then retracts back in continually. Lights flicker and the smoke continues to expand. Suddenly the music stops and the smoke vanishes and we see three woodsmen walking around the convenience store. They sort of seem to move much like Cooper moved in the Purple Room in Part 3. However, the way the scene moves it does look like there could be three woodsmen but I believe this is just a trick and we are seeing duplicates of the same men over and over again. (Note the duality there.) They move in and out of the convenience store. Suddenly the shot becomes fuzzy and then back to normal and fuzzy again. We continue to hear sputtering as the scene continues to shift – focused and out of focus. More quick shots of the woodsmen and then back to the focus/out of focus shots. The camera shakily moves toward the convenience store and we see the woodsmen inside through the windows. And then suddenly the sound shifts and we see what looks to be a circular object and we are going through it. A portal?

We now see what appears to be the same figure we saw in the Glass Box that killed Tracy and Sam. It’s floating in darkness. Out of its mouth, it emits a stream of gray vomit. A close examination of the head, it appears to have small antennae like the card that we saw earlier in the show that Mr C showed Darya. Inside this stream appear to be small shaped eggs. But off to the side coming directly into frame is a large bubble shaped object with the head of BOB. We enter the vomit stream and suddenly a orange-colored explosion. What was a single atmospheric sound has turned into more intense sounds. The explosion seems to move in a clockwise direction. It turns black and then more orange-colored explosions. In many ways, it feels like we are back in the mushroom cloud.

There is another explosion and then a shape comes from it. It is coming directly toward us. It’s a golden blob (the music softens here too). We enter it and suddenly we are seeing a red stream of small blobs flying at us. The first time I watched this and now again as I write this – I thought it was a blood stream.

The scene slowly fades into a purple sea. The same sea that we saw in Part 3? As the camera moves across the ocean, an island emerges in the distance. On top of the tall mountain island is a building. Reminds me of something from Dune. The camera goes through a window/door in the side of the building and we find ourselves looking at a woman on a couch. Her name is Senorita Dido. Next to her is the same phonograph that we saw in Part 1 that was behind Cooper. Next to the phonograph is another electrical generator type machine that was on top of the Purple Room in Part 3. She sits on the couch slowly moving back and forth until she hears an alarm go off on the object next to her.

Behind the object The Giant/??????? emerges. He looks at her and then looks at us for quite some time. A light flickers above the electrical object. The Giant goes to the object and turns off the alarm by pushing a button. He and Dido look at each other and then he turns and disappears behind the object.

We now see him walking up a set of stairs and into a large room. Off to the side is another large electrical object. At the front of the room is a large screen and a balcony. He raises his left hand and the screen comes alive. He is now seeing the same scene that we saw shortly before – the atom bomb exploding. He sees the Woodsmen and then sees BOB’s face in the stream of vomit. The shot pauses and he takes a few steps forward and turns around. He lifts up into the air and a spotlight suddenly appears.

Dido enters the room and sees BOB on the screen. She approaches The Giant – the spotlight still on her. The Giant is laying on his back in the air when a yellow aura emits from his head. The screen changes to stars in space as the electrified aura emits from the Giant. Dido smiles as she watches and then looks concerned. The aura continues to expand. Dido continues to watch, lights flashing. Out of the aura (which looks like a wing creature or a woman’s reproductive system) comes a golden ball – perfectly shaped and round. This is in contrast to the golden orb we previously saw in the stream of vomit.

Dido takes the ball from the air and looks into it. Inside the ball she sees the face of Laura Palmer and she smiles. She pulls it in for a kiss and then lifts the orb into the air. The orb enters a golden looking horn which moves into position toward a black and white scene of earth. The orb comes out of the horn and moves to the United States. The Giant continues to float in mid-air as the scene fades to black.

Cut to a desert scene. The date 1945 appears and then ticks up to 1956. It’s August 5, 1956 in the New Mexico Desert. In the desert lays a single egg. The egg hatches and out comes a strange looking bug. It looks like a mixture of an amphibian/frog but with the wings of a roach or locust. We will call the bug Marcia. (Maureen McCormick who played Marcia on the Brady Bunch was born on August 5, 1956.) Marcia crawls off screen as clouds pass over a full moon.

Somewhere nearby in a small town a young man and a young girl walk back to her house. As they walk by a gas station (not the same convenience store as we saw previously) she finds a penny heads up. She picks it up and says it’s for good luck. She rubs the profile of Abraham Lincoln. The boy tells her he hopes that it brings her good luck.

Cut to some place nearby a shadowy figure appears in the sky and lands in the desert. The entity is a dark woodsmen – thin. Another woodsman appears – this one is heavyset. A middle-aged couple drive down a road and see a car stopped on the other side of the road. Figures are walking around the road. We can hear electricity and static. One of the woodsmen walk up to the car. This woodsman is slender and looks a lot like Abraham Lincoln. So we’ll call him Abe. He has a cigarette in his hand and asks the man, “Gotta light?” He asks three times. The man’s wife looks over at the heavyset woodsman and begins to scream. Her scream sounds muffled like when Ray was yelling at the beginning of the hour. The husband continues to look at Abe and then drives off barely missing another woodsman in the road. Is the fact that the girl found a penny with Lincoln’s bust on it and the woodsman look like Lincoln mean anything?

The boy and girl continue to walk to her house. There are electrical poles along the path. She asks if he lives in town near the school. He says yes and asks how she knew that. “I just do,” she says. She asks if he was going “with” Mary and he says it’s over. She asks if he is sad and he says no. They approach her house. She thanks him for walking him home and the boy offers to give her a kiss. The girl reluctantly agrees. She walks up to her house and goes inside. The boy seems quite pleased with his kiss.

Abe heads down toward a radio station. KPJK is the radio station’s name. It’s 10:15 PM. Around the town we watch as a man works in a garage on a car and a waitress cleans up in a diner. The girl we just saw with the boy sits on her bed listening to the music – her window open. She looks up at the ceiling smiling. Abe enters the station where a woman is standing in the front room. She walks up to him and he asks for a light. They walk toward each other – she almost looks as if she in a trance. He then places his hand on her head and squeezes her head. She falls to the ground, blood spurting from her head.

Abe enters the studio booth and approaches the DJ behind the microphone. He asks if the man has a light and then places his hand on his head. He squeezes and the arm on the record player skids off the album causing the music to stop. The man working on the car looks at the radio. As does the waitress and the girl. Abe flips a switch and then brings the microphone to his mouth.

This is the water. And this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.

He continues to repeat the words and the waitress collapses. The DJ continues to feel pain as the mechanic falls over. Marcia the bug crawls outside. The girl appears to start to turn the radio off as she lays down. Suddenly she falls asleep. Marcia continues to crawl and approaches the window of the girl’s room. It flies to the window and crawls inside. It approaches the girl and then makes a buzzing sound. The girl opens her mouth and the Marcia enters her mouth, its right leg slowly entering her mouth. The girl swallows.

This is the water. And this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.

Abe squeezes harder on the DJ’s head and the man’s head crunches. Blood pours from his head and drips to the ground. With the cigarette in his mouth, Abe turns around and walks out of the radio station. Lights flash. He walks back into the desert and disappears into the dark.

The sound of horses whinnying in the night can be heard as the credits begin. The scene cuts to the girl sleeping. We can hear that same static electrical sound that we have heard before. As the credits roll, the girl’s face seems to have an expression of pain.